A Strong Password Isn't the Strongest Security [telecom]

+--------------- | >***** Moderator's Note ***** | >I really couldn't remember "e" notation for exponentiation. Or is it | >logarithms? | | it's _strictly_ from computer science. Dating to the early days of the | FORTRAN programming language ... .... | A number of early computers actually _stored_ data internally as decimal | (*NOT* binary) values, thus the 'e-format' output was a 'natural' | representation of the internal data format. +---------------

Heh. The second computer I used did that: an IBM 1410 with the hardware floating point add-on.

+--------------- | In this context, the 'e' is a sort-of shorthand for 'exponent' ... +---------------

Later languages extended the notation to indicate precision, e.g., ANSI Common Lisp:

... exponent marker n. a character that is used in the textual notation for a float to separate the mantissa from the exponent. The characters defined as exponent markers in the standard readtable are shown in the next figure. For more information, see Section 2.1 (Character Syntax). ``The exponent marker `d' in `3.0d7' indicates that this number is to be represented as a double float.''

Marker Meaning D or d double-float E or e float (see *read-default-float-format*) F or f single-float L or l long-float S or s short-float

Figure 26-1. Exponent Markers

Note that in CL an optional sign is permitted after the exponent marker, and applies only to the exponent: 1.23e-15, -3.4d+100, etc.

-Rob

----- Rob Warnock

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